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 Two
new soaps have me hooked. I can't bear to keep away from Star
World's Desperate Housewives. It has the delicious
bite of a bitter chocolate. Sharp tangy and sexy… you
bet, I'm hooked! The sharp sexual humour and the irreverent
saucy look at marriage, relationships and mores as seen through
the eyes of a group of vocally unhappy housewives, is incredibly
entertaining… and also as sexily illustrative of urban
values as Sex & The City.
While the repartees on Sex & The City are more
quick on the uptake, Desperate Housewives is better
plotted. The skill with which the director interweaves the
stories of various women is indicative of why Indian television
lags behind in terms of content.
Each of the subplots constitutes a wealth of emotional and
erotic velocity. The bored young wealthy housewife who does
everything with her gardener except gardening, the newly single
mother who's trying hard to woo the plumber next door ("I've
a clog!") away from the woman in the adjacent plot, the
housewife coping with a brood of noisy sons, and finally the
over-finicky wife who manages to win her marriage counselor
over to her side…
****
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It's
all so darned engrossing! Wish our soaps would tearn
the trick of the tread on TV from their American counterparts.
Zee's brand new soap Rabba Ishq Na Hove has
producer Aroona Irani's favourite actress Sangeeta
Ghosh playing a rather surly airhostess who's rude
to her father Kiran Kumar because he has another wife
(shades of Mahesh Bhatt's Zakhm) and to the
eligible tycoon who rides her plane only to gaze at
the lady through glazed eyes, and asks the air hostess
dumb questions like, "Can I have a glass of water?"
H2O, brute?
I can't call Rabba… altogether unwatchable.
It's certainly more polished in presentation than
Ms Irani's earlier hit Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand.
If only Aroona would avoid that distinct and distracting
feeling of getting filmy on us. And please, let's
not drag it.
Must we have a soapy sagaai song where the lead pair,
plus Madame producer (who plays the heroine's mom)
dance as though they are disciples of Karan Johar?
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I've
repeatedly said, Indian television desperately needs to
inculcate a sense of self worth, a feeling of pride in being
distinct from its more affluent and glamorous cousin (cinema).
BBC's Bollywood Inc. on the music industry was fine
except for the fact that it wasn't illustrative or deep
enough. That the music industry is in the doldrums goes
without saying. How it got there is what counts. Not too
many opinions were taken to answer that question. There
was one music executive from a recording company who couldn't
tell us about the turn-around in 1990.
Among musicians they got Anu Malik and Alka Yagnik to speak.
But hey, was that enough? Where was the new talent like
Sunidhi Chauhan, Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghosal who have taken
over film music? And where was Lata Mangeshkar? To have
a discussion on film music without her is to avoid the Taj
Mahal while visiting Agra.
A
lot of the opinion that's filtered into supposedly comprehensive
outsider's overview of the entertainment industry gets diluted
by understatement. You can't carry the burden of being representational
and still shirk major issues by shirking the major players.
If we have a discussion on the music industry we need to
go into people who are movers and shakers.
****
 Movers
and shakers… reminds me of Shekhar Suman who used to
do a stand-up comedy act of that name on Sony Entertainment.
Now he's back on Star One doing The Great Indian Comedy
Show. And I must say some of his comments on Mallika
Sherawat, LK Advani and Abhishek Bachchan were priceless.
If he keeps up this momentum he has a winner on hand.
I must also point out that the spoof on Sarrkar (with
Superman added to the muscle mix) was hilarious. Ranbir
Shorey's takeoff on Bachchan (replete with Lungi, prayer
beads and wig) though slightly irreverent, was first rate.
Who decides the fate of the contestants on the music contests?
The judges or the TRPs? On Fame Gurukul a male contestant
sobbed like a baby after 'principal' Ila Arun chastened
him for hobnobbing in the bathroom with a colleague.
"I know the kind of conferences you carry on in the
bathroom," Ms Arun sounded like the girl from India
TV after the sting operation.
Caught with his pants down (so to speak) the contestant
did the best thing possible. He bawled. As this embarrassing
scene unfolded before our eyes the boy blabbered something
about the lady reminding him of his mother."
Better than any soap, huh?
Oh dear. Another contestant cut his hand while stopping
a plate from falling from his hand. Maybe he likes to keep
his plate and break it too.
 My
choice for personality of the week is John Abraham who was
genuinely gracious and hospital with the winners of the
aadarsh jodi contest for the film Viruddh. As shown
on Star Plus, John sat with the couple, cut a cake and shared
a joke and a smile. In short, a perfect host.
The worst and most unproductive coverage of the week was
Aaj Tak's Bhai Ke Ghar Shehnai. For days on-end the
TV channel set up base in and around the hotel in Dubai
where Dawood's daughter was to wed. Though the correspondent
wasn't privy to any privileged information he behaved as
though he was part of the inner circle.
Finally the cricket-styled coverage of the event said nothing
we didn't already know about our news channels' insatiable
appetite for ghoulish paparazzi-styled coverage of the most
obnoxious happenings.
What next? A ringside view of one of Delhi's ongoing gang
rapes?
(The
views expressed here are those of the author and indiantelevision.com
need not necessarily subscribe to the same)
John
Abraham's pic from: www.indiadaily.com
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